To get the most out of your training, you should train to failure in each set. This simply means you should continue doing your repetitions until you are unable to lift the weight any more. This ensures that you have stimulated as much muscle fiber as possible.” While this book consists of quite a bit of broscience, one should still give credit where credit is due. Arnold is a man with a naturally lanky bone structure who managed to create an extremely aesthethic physique, and beyond that one needs to realize that strength training and bodybuilding are areas where proven experience is superior to "exercise science", because these studies very often have faults. The Bodybuilder’s Kitchen will provide you with everything you need to fuel your workouts and improve your physique. You’ll find definitions of key terms and concepts, explanations of the role and importance of individual muscle groups, descriptions and types, the latest nutritional information around losing fat and gaining muscle, and much, much more. My friend was a serious bodybuilder in the 90s and this was his bible. I just started some casual exercise and found this book a great help. You can take as little or as much from it as you want. I used it for guidance on exercises, advice on reps and sets, and diet. An absolutely comprehensive, fantastic book. Awesome value, even at full price.

Although there are 5- and 6-day variations, the default version of the upper/lower split involves training four days a week. For one, they cut down on the amount of dead time you might spend sitting around resting between sets. This allows you to condense the same amount of training into a shorter period of time. Schwarzenegger’s original workout split also has you training the abs six days a week. Forearms are worked alongside the biceps and triceps.

Specifically, your daily calorie intake should provide somewhere between 250-500 calories over and above your maintenance calorie requirements. And because you’re only training 2-3 muscle groups in a single workout, you also get the opportunity to hit each muscle with a sufficient level of volume to stimulate growth.

If you’re a complete beginner who wants to focus on hypertrophy, you’re better off with a training program that involves lifting weights 3 or 4 times a week, such as a 3-day full-body workout, a 4-day upper/lower split or a 4-day push/pull routine. Personally, I like to exercise every day. It helps to clear my head, makes me more productive, and leaves me feeling a whole lot better. Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training by Mark Rippetoe provides detailed instruction on every aspect of the basics of barbell exercises. Some of the smaller muscle groups are trained more often. The biceps and triceps, for example, are worked four times a week.Now, fifteen fantastic years after that first publication, Arnold is ready to teach and motivate a new generation of athletes with this fully updated and revised "New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding." Your muscles will grow only when they are subjected to an overload. They will not respond to anything less. As you grow stronger, the only way to make your muscles continue to grow is by increasing the amount of work you force them to do. This is most easily done by increasing the amount of weight you use in each exercise.” Physical and psychological stress make withdrawals from the same account. Too much of the latter can make it harder to recover from and adapt to the former. Is the Arnold Split Suitable for Beginners?